The Tears and Smiles of Things

Download or read book The Tears and Smiles of Things written by Andriy Sodomora and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Virgil’s exquisitely ambivalent phrase “sunt lacrimae rerum” (there are tears of/for/in things), Andriy Sodomora, the Ukrainian “voice” of classical antiquity, has produced a series of original vignettes and essays about things: the big things in our lives (like happiness, loneliness, and aging); the small things we do or see daily, rarely paying attention to them (like a tree’s shadow or the kernels on an ear of corn); and the things (i.e., objects) to which we form connections. The selected stories presented here are the first English translations of Sodomora’s profoundly intellectual and intertextual prose. Through his nostalgic memories and recollections, Sodomora takes readers on a journey through western Ukraine, as well as through world literature, from ancient Greece and Rome to the poetry of Paul Verlaine and Federico García Lorca. This book has been published with the support of the Translate Ukraine Translation Program.